“... opinion which should have formed their natural constituency. ‘Flunkeyism’ and the lack of self-respect which it denoted were Bright and Cobden’s habitual explanation for the unaccountable failure of the middle class to perform the historic role for which they had cast it. It is the merit of G.R. Searle’s study to show that matters were more ...”

“... two to three) is still below the national average. He also has words of sympathy for that self-sacrificing group: dons’ wives. But he does not mention the extreme difficulty women have in obtaining university teaching posts, thereby inflicting a crushing financial burden on Newnham, a single-sex college – as indeed on all colleges which want to ...”

“... or exploitation, nor religious feeling to priestly mystification. Not the reason of science or self-interest, but only the call of love could cure the curse of Cain. An alternative human nature, in keeping with the Everlasting Gospel, lay waiting to be realised. ‘The intensity of this vision,’ Thompson writes, ‘made it impossible for Blake to fall ...”

“... were cut short prematurely. Grandfather Toynbee had been a successful London doctor until his self-inflicted experiments with chloroform went fatally wrong. An even more striking exemplar was the remarkable career at Balliol College, Oxford of Uncle Arnold, after whom not only his nephew but Toynbee Hall in the East End of London were posthumously ...”

“... repetition. The book that follows is a model of how such things should be done. It starts with a self-contained introduction, then gives the whole text of Steller’s Journal of a Voyage with Bering, followed by intelligent notes and an impressive bibliography. Many people on hearing the name of Steller will cry ‘Steller’s eider!’ or ‘Swift’s ...”

“... no committee.’ So Cabinet ministers had their first experience of having to negotiate with a self-confessed Marxist. We just kept telling them that we couldn’t have proper talks until they released Nelson Mandela and unbanned the ANC. Nelson knew we were working for him. When the Commonwealth Eminent Persons’ Group came out, he gave ex-President ...”

“... to Saddam Hussein. In letting passion overcome their political acumen, the Palestinians suffered a self-inflicted wound. They incurred the wrath not only of the West but of other Arabs as well. The Palestinians in Jordan suffered particularly: the incensed Saudis cut off Jordan’s oil allowance, and the United States Congress voted to halt America’s subsidy ...”

“... way in which he nurtured his art to the exclusion of all else. He was one of the most ruthlessly self-protective artists who ever lived. ‘I shall not visit my children during Christmas leave,’ he wrote to his wife in December 1941, ‘they should be able to retain the impression formed of me for another three months. I can’t afford to waste any time on ...”

“... basic message was that Israeli occupation must be ended, that Palestinians have a right to self-determination, and that they intend to pursue it unrelentingly until they achieve statehood. The Intifada, he suggested, had already begun to build the institutions and infrastructure of the Palestinian state. On the other hand, he accepted the need for a ...”

“... fiction and drama to the living language, and to a conception of literary study as a form of self-development rather than a means to acquire objective knowledge. (Where the journal was comparatively weak, or saw no need to compete with the academic establishment, was in the historical understanding of literature.) As time went on and Golding and his ...”

“... drinking club. Especially (but not exclusively) on the left, it was also a culture in which self-education, conspicuous erudition, even philosophical speculation were tolerated as they were not in other union cultures. The brightest star in the left firmament was the Fife miner, Lawrence Daly, who rose to the post of NUM General Secretary under the ...”

“... liberal morality can say only ‘the choice is yours’ and hope ‘that enough will choose to be self-sacrificial life providers and self-sacrificial death dealers to suit the purposes of the rest.’ She nicely sums up the result of tailoring moral theories to fit the concept of obligation by saying that morality on this ...”

“... of winning popular acclaim while affecting to disdain it, which most gratified Taylor’s self-esteem, as he more or less admitted. Thus he relished not only the fact that he was for years the most popular lecturer in the Oxford History Faculty, but also that his lectures were scheduled at the most unpropitious hour, which correspondingly inflated his ...”

“... sense. But ‘neither our European competitors nor the Japanese can be blamed for the long list of self-inflicted wounds,’ insists Luttwak, ‘that are directly causing the Third-Worldisation of America. They had nothing to do with the most original invention of American statecraft since the Constitution: Representation Without Taxation by limitless ...”

“... all texts are figural’ – rhetorical or fictional – ‘through and through, whatever their self-professed logical status.’ Richard Rorty, who identifies philosophy merely as ‘a kind of writing’, also believes, according to Norris, that ‘literary critics had best give up the idea that philosophy (or “theory”) is capable of solving any ...”